Looking back to move forward

At home we live Christmas with great excitement. I have an 11-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son, and they are the most demanding people I know: they always ask the best of us, of my wife and me. And they’re insatiable—they never have enough, especially when they’re on holiday.

I adore my kids, no doubt about it, but at this time of year I end up completely exhausted with them: Christmas Eve, Santa, the fair, family, the circus, friends, New Year’s Eve, Epiphany, gifts for everyone, dinners, lunches, maybe a trip if it comes up… It’s madness.

Even so, I still have time to work on some days, and at Christmas I always take the opportunity to wrap up a few pending topics and to look back on the year professionally.

2025, just like that, without stopping to review everything in detail, has been an intense year at Arcadina—one in which we set out to take a step forward in offering our photographer clients an even more professional solution, if possible.

We started the year with the recent launch of online contract management, a basic necessity for the security and future of any professional photographer.

We also improved payment methods—for example, we added Mercado Pago, which was highly requested by clients in Latin America.

And we’ve been working very hard on a total renewal of our service’s web panel, which urgently needed improvements in design and user experience. Now that the year is ending, I can say the change is already noticeable and that the new foundation is well underway.

The other major new release this year was the launch in December of a new invoicing and collections system (adapted to VeriFactu in Spain) to complete our clients’ workflow:

visits to the web portfolio → bookings → online payment → contract signing → selection and delivery of photos and videos → invoicing and collections.

An all-in-one solution.

With this latest release, we’ve closed the loop: our customer can capture leads and turn them into paying clients with a single solution. Because that is our main goal—that they don’t have to jump between different disconnected tools that lead to lost contacts, missed opportunities, duplication, things being forgotten, unpaid invoices… A lot of stress and not much free time.

What can we expect from 2026? Personally, I ask for little, because I have a lot and I’m aware of it. I only ask for health and love for all my family and friends—and for you who are reading this. Come to think of it, asking for that is actually asking for a lot.

And professionally, I believe that after a few years of running hard to turn Arcadina around and make it a professional all-in-one solution, the time has now come to consolidate what we’ve achieved.

We’re going to complete that new web panel—which is going to be awesome, I’m telling you already. And we’re going to fine-tune and better connect all our professional solutions so they have even greater potential. This is the moment to polish the details, which is where you can truly make the difference.

Of course, some new features will also arrive, but for now I can’t say more.

And you—what do you ask of 2026? If you reply with a line, I’d love to read it.

I wish you a 2026 full of health, love, and many professional and personal successes.

Félix Mezcua.